Tuesday, May 17, 2011

40,000 units of Geiger counters and dosimeters donated by the United States, France, and Canada after the Fukushima I Nuke Plant accident still sit in a warehouse at Narita International Airport, according to a Japanese blogger (yougen).

The blogger says in his/her post (in Japanese) these Geiger counters and dosimeters are under the jurisdiction of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. Donations from foreign countries are handled by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Distributing the Geiger counters and dosimeters to the plant workers is done by the Ministry of Health and Welfare.

Distributing the Geiger counters and dosimeters to civilians is done by the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency under the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.

This blogger attacks a Representative from Japan Communist Party because the Representative asked the Ministry of Health and Welfare why the Ministry hadn't distributed the donated Geiger counters and dosimeters to the residents in Fukushima. According to the blogger, this Representative is totally out of the line for asking the "wrong" ministry - it is METI's NISA in charge of civilians! How dare she asks such a stupid question!

I thought that was very strange, but the main point of his/her post is that the donated radiation measurement devices still sit in a warehouse.

Beside the Geiger counters and dosimeters, mountains of ramen noodles, water bottles, sneakers, blankets, underwear, socks, canned food, rice, mattresses, soap may be sitting at official distribution centers. Never mind that there are still many, many people living in shelters with scant food and water. Bureaucrats do what they gotta do, and that is to do what they are told to do by the book and nothing else.

11
comments:

Anonymous
said...

thanks for your job to keep people informed. I'm in France, and there is no newspaper or TV to do that... Everything is ok, will be over in 9 month they say...

If i was japanese, i would become a serial killer, to make them pay, all, tepco, government, before I die. They're all criminals who should be in a special trial like nuremberg, for crime against the humanity.

While I can understand your sentiments killing the individuals responsible outside of the law would only serve to gain sympathy for them and them industry. The most we can hope for is a more wary populace who hopefully educate themselves without the help of the nuclear industry.

The local population isn't entirely blameless for the current situation the price of public safety is constant and meaningful public vigilance. Unfortunately this is lacking in just about every society that uses nuclear power. The Germans seem to be one of the few countries that has actually taken a frank look at the true costs and long term dangers of nuclear power since the recent disaster. Everyone in the Tōhoku region were happy use this form of power generation without looking hard at all the long term possibilities and ramifications until after there was an obvious problem. Few countries who rely on nuclear power can say differently.

The sad truth is no one will ever be meaningfully punished for allowing a substandard reactor design to be sited in a disaster zone. Japan has numerous other reactors that could be knocked out tomorrow but the entire population isn't clamoring for them to be shutdown so they have no one to blame but themselves when it comes to pass. This goes for the rest of the nuclear world none of the many nuclear accidents that have happened since the beginning of the atomic age were supposed to be able to happen until they did. Then the government and industry promised it wouldn't happen next time because of "lessons learned". The only problem is they never learn the lesson that nuclear power required something man doesn't have, perfection and forethought.

The nuclear industry and it's regulators work to ignore pressing issues like solar generated EMP because it is too terrible to contemplate lost of the entire world grind for 6-9 months. Imagine 400 Fukushima's all at once because the nuclear industry can't and won't until after it happens and then they'll say, "who could have known".

Complete Radiation SolutionsWhile I can understand your sentiments killing the individuals responsible outside of the law would only serve to gain sympathy for them and them industry. The most we can hope for is a more wary populace who hopefully educate themselves without the help of the nuclear industry.

Great Post.Really informative.We have completed sessions in Topeka, Omaha, Kansas City and Springfield, MA. They have all been extremely successful in providing all of the participants with a real response scenario using live radiation sources. We also provide sources to support TRG and DOE as

About my coverage of Japan Earthquake of March 11

I am Japanese, and I not only read Japanese news sources for information on earthquake and the Fukushima Nuke Plant but also watch press conferences via the Internet when I can and summarize my findings, adding my observations.

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Well, this was, until March 11, 2011. Now it is taken over by the events in Japan, first earthquake and tsunami but quickly by the nuke reactor accident. It continues to be a one-person (me) blog, and I haven't even managed to update the sidebars after 5 months... Thanks for coming, spread the word.------------------This is an aggregator site of blogs coming out of SKF (double-short financials ETF) message board at Yahoo.

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